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Winter Storm Fern slammed across broad swaths of the country this weekend, knocking out service to hundreds of thousands and snarling travel from Texas to the Northeast. While a Fox video description claimed more than 548,000 customers were without power, independent outage trackers and wire services reported numbers in the low hundreds of thousands — a grim reminder that Americans still face real vulnerability when the grid is tested.
American Public Power Association President and CEO Scott Corwin stepped onto Fox & Friends Weekend to explain how America’s municipal and public utilities are scrambling to respond, and to urge calm while crews work around the clock. Corwin’s organization represents the thousands of local lineworkers on the front lines of these restorations, and their rapid mobilization is the reason outages are being repaired as quickly as possible.
We should applaud those line crews — they are the true patriots in storms like this — but we should also remember the lessons of past failures. When policy and bureaucracy hobble the power system, ordinary Americans pay the price, as we learned the hard way during the 2021 Texas freeze that left millions in the dark and cost lives and livelihoods. Washington would be wise to prioritize reliability and common-sense preparedness over ideology.
Utilities and emergency managers are urging straightforward precautions: have a safe backup heat source, never run gas generators indoors, keep phones charged, check on elderly neighbors, and follow your utility’s outage map and emergency guidance. These are common-sense steps families can take now to stay safe while restoration crews do their dangerous, dirty work in the cold and ice.
If Americans want long-term security, we need policies that back up power with real, reliable generation and hardened infrastructure — not policies that prioritize optics over performance. Local public power utilities and associations like APPA know how to keep the lights on when storms hit; they need support, funding, and political leaders who will stop politicizing energy and start investing in resilience.
Stand with the lineworkers and first responders who are risking their lives to restore heat and light, and do your part at home to stay safe and help neighbors. In times like these, our communities and our values matter most — conservative commonsense, local action, and gratitude for hard work will get us through this storm together.
